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Mary Meeker, General Partner KPCB

Monikered as “Queen of the Net” by Barron’s magazine last 1998, our 79th most powerful woman on Forbes’ 2013 list has made waves mainly as a research analyst particularly for Morgan Stanley in the 90s and onto to the next century.

Mary Meeker: “Queen of the Net”

From serving as its lead manager in Netscape Communications’ IPO last August 1995 to Google’s IPO last August 2004, Meeker’s internet savvy started to brew when she got into the mix with Ray Ozzie, Jim Manz, Steve Case, and while watching John Gage’s demo. And this was when she confirmed that online connectivity would not only change how we communicate but also how establishments would operate.

And in late 1995, when Mary Meeker and Chris DePuy came up with “The Internet Report”, this became the lightpost for investors in the dot com surge. Consequently, with many other in-depth annual internet reviews at Web 2.0 conferences that followed, Meeker established herself as Wall Street’s Champion of the Internet.

As for dedication, Meeker’s stance along with her colleagues during Morgan Stanley’s turbulent stage in April 2005 gave way to a letter to co-Presidents Zoe Cruz and Steve Crawford concerning the company’s culture damage.

From its basics being featured in Wall Street Journal in May 2005 to serving as a stabilizing factor in Morgan Stanley’s board navigation to being included in Patricia Beard’s book “Blue Blood & Mutiny”, Meeker was simply a fortress.

Inevitably, by February 2011, Meeker came up with USA, Inc. and as those who are aware of it knows – it’s a non-partisan report that looked at the U.S. government (and its financials) from a business perspective.

Hmm… no wonder she was named as one of the ten smartest people in tech by Fortune magazine in 2010.

Yet in all her accomplishments, Meeker was among those disparaged in press and investigated for fraud after the 2000 dot com bubble. Then again, although there were no charges of wrongdoing, Morgan Stanley and nine other firms were forced to cooperate into a legal settlement.

Well, something has got to give but not for Meeker. In fact, as Forbes has put it, “her reputation for incisive vision in the tech industry” is what carried her up into the list of the most powerful women in the world.

This is especially encouraging for all highly intellectual people, man or woman. For more than money and position – brains is given due recognition – which should be. After all, doesn’t all creation and innovation come from the Brains?

Oh, in case you’re wondering … Meeker resigned from being Morgan Stanley’s Managing Director in December 2010; and joined Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers as a General Partner in 2011. Now, again, she’s feeling something.. Meeker is bullish on Android and believes it’s set to outperform Apple’s iPhone.